Mastercard Launches Agent Pay for AI Protocol to Facilitate Payments Between AI Agents
Mastercard has announced the launch of a new protocol called Agent Pay for AI, which supports payments and small transfers between AI agents. For example, AI agents can automatically complete payments when retrieving data in segments from websites.
The protocol stores the permissions granted to AI agents by humans on the blockchain (initially using the Polygon network), ensuring transparency and verifiability throughout the process, allowing multiple parties to verify whether the agent's actions comply with instructions. Companies such as Adyen, Coinbase, and Cloudflare are collaborating with Mastercard on this development.
Mastercard's Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert stated that this protocol will not become a major revenue source in the short term but is expected to develop into a significant emerging market over the next five years. Giants like Visa, Stripe, Coinbase, and Google are also actively positioning themselves in AI payment protocols.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Mastercard has been exploring blockchain and emerging payment scenarios, and the Agent Pay for AI protocol continues its transition from traditional card payments to machine-to-machine (M2M) economic infrastructure. It has previously promoted the standardization of digital payments in the AI/Web3 field through collaborations with various payment and cloud service providers.
In terms of capital pathways, Mastercard is leveraging blockchain resources like Polygon and its partner network to formalize AI agent payments, aiming to seize the entry point for machine economy payments, create new fee and ecosystem revenue streams, and provide compliant, cross-chain standardized solutions for partners, accelerating the commercialization of AI agents in data transactions and e-commerce.
Similar to early moves by Stripe and Visa into crypto and automated payments, current payment giants are in an expansion phase transitioning from human-led transactions to AI agent-led M2M payments, collectively promoting the future transaction infrastructure dominated by AI chatbots and agents through this protocol.
Essentially, this represents a technological substitution and capital concentration: the Agent Pay for AI protocol directly replaces traditional human-authorized payment chains, accelerating the concentration of machine economy capital from centralized platforms to standardized AI payment protocols through blockchain permission storage, reshaping the trust structure and pricing power of AI agents in data acquisition, e-commerce transactions, and service interactions.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The more AI agents there are, the more necessary machine payment protocols become.
The more transparent blockchain verification is, the lower the trust cost of agent execution.
The earlier payment standardization occurs, the faster the scaling of the AI economy.